25 years in sales, mainly in the UK. Wine trade, screen printing and signage.

Moved to Perth, Western Australia in July 2012 - knew no-one!

Business Development Manager role for a signage contractor

Threw himself into LinkedIn

Annual target exceeded within 4 months!

50% of sales came via LinkedIn

Decided to aim to become Perth's social selling 'go to' guy

Launched Social4Sales - already fully booked until mid December!

Other links

Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary Vaynerchuck's books (my favourite is Crush it)

Gary's blog

Darrel's next door neighbour...as featured in the podcast!

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

Help me to promote the podcast

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No interviews this week but plenty to catch up with following my vacation, I even managed to connect with Santa Claus this week...a very proud moment!

News

Another lawsuit is filed against LinkedIn and this one is just plain ridiculous! Apparently the ability to read someone's background and perform a few checks on LinkedIn when considering recruiting them violates a US law. Read the full story here. Has the world gone mad?!

LinkedIn plans to expand its publishing team. Its becoming increasing clear that publishing is a core focus for LinkedIn as demonstrated by their plans to open a major new office in San Francisco in 2016.

Jeff Weiner interview with Bloomberg

LinkedIn hits back and asks judge to dismiss the lawsuit regarding the email reminders sent to those who do not respond when an invitation to join LinkedIn message is sent to them. As opposed to the other lawsuit, I can't see how LinkedIn can defend this.

It looks like premium accounts may be about to re-vamped, effectively making them more expensive. The Spotlight premium account had a very short life - below is a reply from the help center on this matter.

Lets hope the 'test' fails then!

Lets hope the 'test' fails then!

Tips & Features

You can now see personalised invitation messages in the quick menu by clicking on 'see all' (see below)

'Groups' has now disappeared in the reasons for inviting menu (see below). LinkedIn help center are claiming that this is a fault but I'm not convinced, lets hope so. In the meantime there are a few workarounds. Firstly there is the method using LinkedIn Contacts (2nd tier only) which is my favoured method - see here for a detailed guide on how to do this. Or you can now customise invitations using a mobile app (not tablet) - scroll down to check out the show notes for episode 32 for instructions on how to do that.

Apparently a fault.....lets see!

Apparently a fault.....lets see!

New 'Actions' feature in the 'Who's viewed your profile' section. I have only just got this feature so have not really been able to understand its benefits but it seems like a good idea. Jo Saunders has published a more detailed post about it.

And finally the best article I read this week about LinkedIn was Data and the Power it Bestows by Raven Jiang. I'm not one of those people that worries about big data and security / privacy but I must admit that Raven puts a very interesting argument that the information we are providing to LinkedIn could be abused and they clearly 'hold the key' to its future access.

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

Help me to promote the podcast

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

show notes

Searching for jobs on LinkedIn Update. Last week I talked about the 5 ways you can search for jobs but someone has revealed a 6th way - searching or browsing through updates in a company page

Some companies will have a specific 'careers' page on their company page (see top arrow) but you will also find jobs advertised in their status update stream (see bottom arrow)

News

New YOUniversity section which gives college/school students some great tools to help them select the right university for them.

This is divided into three integrated pages, lets look at each;

Decision Boards. This is the area where students can organise their search for the right course and university using a combination of organizational, social and insight tools.

Rankings. (See image at the top of the page) This is the most controversial element where universities are ranked according to the 'success' of their alumni with getting the jobs they wanted. There were only five careers listed when I looked but I am sure more will be added in time.

Finder. Simply enter your criteria such as career (ie law) and location (ie London) or/and employer (who you want to work for) and it will tell you how many alumni from each university achieved these goals.

Other news - SlideShare gets its first ever iOS app, I'm shocked they didn't have one already but it does look pretty good

Also LinkedIn is introducing a new 'Actions' section into the profile views section of Linkedin. I don't have it but Jo Saunders has written agreat post about it.

Searching. I'm still getting some odd results no doubt due to the new Galene search engine. My latest findings suggest that closeness in network has moved down the pecking order. What are your experiences of search, any different?

POEM

Actually maybe its not a poem, but amusing all the same! Thanks to Carl Whalley for sending it in;

Mark Williams has moved his mouse! Would you like to endorse Mark with his new skill: 'Mouse Moving", so future employers can help him use it to realise his full potential?

An email from Joe Tester has triggered a Tweet which was automatically posted to his Facebook account and so in turn updated his Linked In status to "just doing my emails". Congratulate Joe now?

It's been 2 years 3 days and 19 minutes since you first told us you're not interested in upgrading to a Premium Account. Would you like to upgrade to a Premium Account, and get more fantastic emails from us? Don't be left out - your network is talking about you behind your back - find out what they are saying about you with a Premium Account!

Congratulations - you have been endorsed as a Turkey Sexer by Nettie Worker (LION 9999+ contacts!)

HOT NEWS! All the LinkedIn directors have sold all their shares as they announce to the market the future looks brighter than ever.

Company Page Frustrations. I got to see first hand just how hard it can be when trying to add images to company pages, merge profiles and create showcase pages (you can only create 2 each day - goodness only knows why!) and the interesting fact came out from LinkedIn admitting that the only browser LinkedIn is fully compatible with is Mozilla Firefox so I have started using it for all my LinkedIn activities and I must admit it is a pretty good browser and many activities do seem a bit smoother/quicker.

Question. How do you find the time to use LinkedIn effectively?

This is such a great question and not an easy one to answer as its something we all struggle with. My three tips are;

Schedule activities such as reading updates and posting.

Use mobile apps, the LinkedIn main one and the Connected app

Make your content engaging which allows your activities to be quick reactive things rather than having to spend time thinking of what to create and post all the time.

LinkedIn keeps changing and updating so why not get notifications of any important changes to your inbox? Sign up for my FREE LinkedIn updates service here.

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

Help me to promote the podcast

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.